Vale Jack Lockett: a zest for life for 111 years

Premier Steve Bracks at Mr Lockett's funeral, held at Strathdale Community Centre in Bendigo.

Jack Lockett, World War I veteran and optimist, always looked forward to the future. He had anticipated, for one thing, living long enough to become the world's oldest man.

Mr Lockett, 111, fell short of his goal when he died peacefully in his sleep last Saturday.

Yesterday, about 700 people gathered in Bendigo - the city where his incident-filled life came to an end - to commemorate the death of a citizen who had lived at least long enough to become Australia's oldest man and the world's oldest Freemason.

Though he witnessed carnage and despair during his service on the Western Front in France and Belgium, Mr Lockett maintained his appetite for life until the end.

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"How irresistible has been his zest for living," marvelled his friend, the Reverend Dick Nethercote, who conducted the state funeral service at the Strathdale Community Centre, in Bendigo.

"How unassuming and self-effacing Jack has been to the very end."

Mr Lockett, a man who revelled in his "ordinariness", attained a celebrity status after he became a centenarian. He was noted not only for his remarkable lucidity and age, but as one of Australia's few surviving World War I veterans.

Enlisting in Mildura in 1916 - Mr Lockett never forgot his number "1194" - his three-year war campaign included a stint in the trenches in Flanders. The experience left a deep impression on the man whose awards included the French Legion of Honour.

"He saw the massacres of war as futile and pointless," said Mr Nethercote. But it did not sour him. "He was always looking forward while not forgetting the past."

When Mr Lockett returned from the war, he farmed his own Mallee property in Linga and married his sweetheart Maybell ("Doll") Ingwerson in 1923.

The couple had four children, Jack, Kevin, Joyce and Ron. Although Mrs Lockett pre-deceased him, their union lasted 58 years and produced 15 grandchildren and 24 great grandchildren.

They remember him with great affection as "Pop". He was never interested in pomp and ceremony, remarked his granddaughter Debra Hermann at yesterday's funeral attended by Premier Steve Bracks and a host of other notables. "He would probably want to know what the fuss was all about," Ms Hermann said.

Although Mr Lockett was modest about his life, the path it took was not always an easy one.

He was born at Waanyarra, south of Bendigo, in 1891, and left school at 12 to work on local farms. Later, when he went to work in the Mallee with a couple of his uncles, he would recall their spartan diet consisted of a loaf of bread, oily butter and an onion. He later attributed his long life to plenty of exercise and an early diet of quandong jam and "underground mutton" - a rather mischievous way of referring to rabbits.

His humour was never far away. Last birthday, his grandson Murray recalled a journalist asked Mr Lockett how long he would live. Mr Lockett replied: "Till the day I die."